The Lost Art of Scripture

An urgent review of the use and abuse of holy texts in today’s world – and a call for understanding and compassion at a time when religion is viewed as a source of conflict.

'Karen Armstrong has written an amazingly wide-ranging book, showing that the world's religious texts can be a force for good today, rather than a cause of conflict. The scale of her knowledge never ceases to astonish'

John Barton, author of A History of the Bible

A triumph... Karen Armstrong is one of our great commentators on the sacred. In this book she explores the sacred texts with a scholar’s eye and an illuminating clarity suggesting how much their wisdom and lasting power are still needed today

[The Lost Art of Scripture] takes us on a glorious journey… Armstrong is the most articulate and generous-hearted exegete of religion writing in English at the present time

Rich and wide-ranging… [The Lost Art of Scripture] makes a fascinating read… a treasure chest of social and religious history. Armstrong’s lucid prose makes her many-stranded story remarkably straightforward to follow… a learned and stimulating book

A remarkable book by a remarkable writer… the author’s mission is urgent in the light of the uses to which the world’s scriptures are sometimes put

The Lost Art of Scripture… exhibits [Armstrong’s] well-known and admired characteristics as a writer: an ability to be both authoritative on all the major faiths…a reasoned insistence that religion today is misunderstood, as much by the religious as by their critics; and a passionate appeal to our fractious and fractured world to embrace religion’s core message…compassion and respect for others

Magisterial ... a dazzling accomplishment, a reflection of an encyclopaedic knowledge of comparative religion and of a wisdom about spirituality in the human species

Exhilarating, challenging and curiously comforting… [The Lost Art of Scripture has] been written not only with intellectual rigour and an accessible turn of phrase, but also with love

One of our best living writers on religion

Karen Armstrong is one of the handful of wise and supremely intelligent commentators on religion

A fascinating excursion into neo-Gnosticism… Armstrong…has clearly done an enormous amount of reading and research to handle so skilfully the mass of material she surveys

[Armstrong] weaves…[a] truly vast history into a coherent and fascinating narrative… an interesting and very well-written book

An epic story with a polemical edge… [a] lucid account of the evolution of sacred text… The Lost Art of Scripture is an impressive achievement, presenting a wide sweep of global religious history in little more than five hundred pages… Armstrong is…an accomplished and fluent writer

'An amazingly wide-ranging book, showing that the world's religious texts can be a force for good today' John Barton, author of A History of the Bible 
 
In our increasingly secular world, holy texts are at best seen as irrelevant, and at worst as an excuse to incite violence, hatred and division. The Quran, the Torah and the Bible are often employed selectively to underwrite arbitrary and subjective views. They are believed to be divinely ordained; they are claimed to contain eternal truths. 
 
 But as Karen Armstrong, a world authority on religious affairs, shows in this fascinating journey through millennia of history, this narrow reading of scripture is a relatively recent phenomenon. Armstrong argues that only by rediscovering an open engagement with their holy texts will the world’s religions be able to curtail arrogance and intolerance. And if scripture is used to engage with the world in more meaningful and compassionate ways, we will find that it still has a great deal to teach us. 
 
‘Magisterial… A dazzling accomplishment’ New York Times 
 
‘Glorious… Armstrong is the most articulate and generous-hearted exegete of religion writing in English at the present time’ A.N. Wilson, New Statesman

Vintage Minis

Religion

Vintage Minis bring you the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human – from birth to death and everything in between

They look good and read well. That’s win/win in our book

Karen Armstrong is one of the world's leading commentators on religious affairs. She spent seven years as a Roman Catholic nun, but left her teaching order in 1969 to read English at St Anne's College, Oxford. In 1982, she became a full time writer and broadcaster. She is a best-selling author of over 16 books. A passionate campaigner for religious liberty, Armstrong has addressed members of the United States Congress and participated in the World Economic Forum. In 2013 she recieved the British Academy's inaugural Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for improving transcultural understanding.

‘Because "God" is infinite, nobody can have the last word’ 
 
What is this thing, religion, supposedly the cause of bloodshed and warring for centuries? What is ‘God’ and do we need ‘Him’ in our modern world? Karen Armstrong looks again at these questions in a refreshing and startling way. God is not to be ‘believed in’ as a child believes in Santa Claus; religion is not a story to be proven true or false, but a discipline akin to music or art that answers a deeply human need, and can teach us to discover new capacities of mind and heart. 
 
Selected from A Case for God, Fields of Blood and The Lost Art of Scripture 
 
VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS. 
 
A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human 
 
Also in the Vintage Minis 'Great Ideas' series: 
Art by Simon Schama 
Science by Ian McEwan

Religion and the History of Violence

Fields of Blood

Our foremost scholar of religion challenges one of the most persistent myths of our time: that religion has been the cause of all major wars.

Karen Armstrong's wonderful book certainly cleanses the mind. It may even do a little repair work on the heart

Karen Armstrong is one of our most perceptive and thoughtful writers on religion... Consistently surprising and illuminating, Fields of Blood should be read by anyone interested in understanding the interaction of religion with violence in the modern world

A fascinating and very accessible book... Fields of Blood is a must read for those who want to work for justice and peace.

Tariq Ramadan, Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies, University of Oxford

Mind-boggling… we feel we are in the hands of an expert. Armstrong is doing us a great service

Elegant and powerful, erudite and accurate...dazzling in its breadth and historical detail

Riveting… Armstrong is one of our most erudite expositors of religion… a rare mix of cool-headed scholarship and impassioned concern

A powerful and important work of scholarship, synthesis and argument... It is also a remarkably pleasurable read

A magisterial debunking of the secularist tale

A welcome counterblast... Excellent

Her view of religion is broad and deep, identifying it both with a universal need for meaning, and with the human desire for community

Engaging… Makes its case eloquently

A hefty yet accessible tome that debunks myths, fires debate and helps explain some of the chaos in the world today

Well researched, insightful and revelatory… A compelling argument

Armstrong offers both a convincing rebuttal of some key New Atheist arguments, and hope for a better future

Taking us from prehistoric to modern times, Karen Armstrong deftly manages her vast subject, and her conclusions will surprise you

A disturbing and refreshing view of 20,000 years of human society

Karen Armstrong is one of the world’s leading commentators on religious affairs. She spent seven years as a Roman Catholic nun in the 1960s, and then read English at St Anne’s College, Oxford. In 1982, she became a full-time writer and broadcaster. Her books include A History of God, The Bible: A Biography, The Case for God and, most recently, Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life. 
 
Armstrong has addressed members of the United States Congress, has participated in the World Economic Forum and, in 2005, was appointed by Kofi Annan to join the High Level Group of the United Nations initiative 'The Alliance of Civilizations'. In 2008 she was awarded the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Medal and, in the same year, won the TED prize. In 2013 she received the British Academy’s inaugural Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for improving Transcultural Understanding.

It is the most persistent myth of our time: religion is the cause of all violence. But history suggests otherwise. Karen Armstrong, former Roman Catholic nun and one of our foremost scholars of religion, speaks out to disprove the link between religion and bloodshed. 
 
* Religion is as old as humanity: Fields of Blood goes back to the Stone Age hunter-gatherers and traces religion through the centuries, from medieval crusaders to modern-day jihadists. 
 
* The West today has a warped concept of religion: we regard faith as a personal and private matter, but for most of history faith has informed people’s entire outlook on life, and often been inseparable from politics. 
 
* Humans undoubtedly have a natural propensity for aggression: the founders of the largest religions – Jesus, Buddha, the rabbis of early Judaism, the prophet Muhammad – aimed to curb violence and build a more peaceful and just society, but with our growing greed for money and wealth came collective violence and warfare. 
 
* With the arrival of the modern all-powerful, secular state humanity’s destructive potential has begun to spiral out of control. Is humanity on the brink of destroying itself? 
 
Fields of Blood is a celebration of the ancient religious ideas and movements that have promoted peace and reconciliation across millennia of civilization.

A History of God

The bestselling and seminal work from one of our foremost commentators on religion.

This is the most fascinating and learned survey of the biggest wild-goose chase in history - the quest for God. Karen Armstrong is a genius

A splendidly readable book...the stage is set for the question: has God a future?

We are all watching a daily fight between the darkness and light. What we want, but may never get, is assurance that the light will prevail. Armstrong is too tough a thinker to offer us comfort there

Armstrong shows a reverent curiosity and a generosity of spirit, refreshing the understanding of what one knows and providing a clear introduction to the unfamiliar

Witty, informative and contemplative: Ms Armstrong can simplify complex ideas, but she is never simplistic

Only those who think they know it all will fail to be fascinated by Armstrong's search for God

Armstrong's book has great merits. An ex-nun, this formidably intelligent woman knows enough about both Judaism and Islam to be appreciated by Jewish and Muslim scholars... Whenever she deals with Christian mysticims, agnosticism and heterodoxy, Armstrong offers valuable insights

An enormously intellectually challenging book. A fascinating way of approaching the subject

Karen Armstrong is one of the world's leading commentators on religious affairs. She spent seven years as a Roman Catholic nun in the 1960s, but then left her teaching order in 1969 to read English at St Anne's College, Oxford. In 1982, she became a full time writer and broadcaster. She is a best-selling author of over 15 books. An accomplished writer and passionate campaigner for religious liberty, Armstrong has addressed members of the United States Congress and the Senate and has participated in the World Economic Forum.

The idea of a single devine being - God, Yahweh, Allah - has existed for over 4,000 years. But the history of God is also the history of human struggle. While Judaism, Islam and Christianity proclaim the goodness of God, organised religion has too often been the catalyst for violence and ineradicable prejudice. 
 
In this fascinating, extensive and original account of the evolution of belief, Karen Armstrong examines Western society's unerring fidelity to this idea of One God and the many conflicting convictions it engenders. A controversial, extraordinary story of worship and war, A History of God confronts the most fundamental fact - or fiction - of our lives.

A New Interpretation of Genesis

In the Beginning

The bestselling author brings her peerless powers of examination to one of the most familiar but least understood books of the Bible: the Book of Genesis.

Both humble and generous, Karen Armstrong rescues Genesis from purely literary criticism by seeing it as a collection of rather baffling teaching stories, and argues forcefully that we have to struggle for the meanings embedded in the often mysterious text, much as Jacob wrestled all night with God in the shape of an angel.

Superb...a jewel of a study... The entire book is written with the same level of passion and insight...Ms Armstrong has taken a familiar biblical story and made it relevant to our deepest and darkest concerns...a little masterpiece worthy of being a long-treasured companion to the ancient classic she celebrates

Armstrong reveals much about this ostensibly familiar work

Armstrong wants to restore the philosophical to the question of faith, and she does so in an approachable manner

The foundation stone of Jewish and Christian scriptures, the power of the Book of Genesis lies in its stories - Creation, the Fall, Cain and Abel, Noah, Abraham, Jacob and Joseph. These ancient tales illuminate some of our most enduring and profound problems: cowardice, the struggle with evil, the difficulty of facing past mistakes, achieving a true understanding of our innermost selves. Karen Armstrong traces the themes and meanings of these stories, examining what they can still tell us about the human quest for meaning.

Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life

After the bestselling The Case for God, Karen Armstrong makes the case for compassion - an urgent appeal to establish empathy and altruism at the centre of our private and public lives.

Welcome to a life guided by compassion. This book presents twelve practical steps for how we can bring compassion to the forefront of our lives - creating a happier, better world. 
 
Practising these steps will not change our lives overnight and turn us into saints or sages: the attempt to become a more compassionate human being is a lifelong project. Yet Karen Armstrong argues that compassion is inseparable from humanity, and by transcending the limitations of selfishness on a daily basis we will not only make a difference in the world but also lead happier, more fulfilled, lives. 
 
Taking as her starting point the teachings of the great world religions,this book argues that compassion is hardwired into our brains, yet is constantly pushed back by our more primitive instincts for selfishness and survival. Yet in today's world, compassion in no longer a luxury but, in the words of Martin Luther King, 'an absolute necessity for our survival'. 
 
‘A profound and lucid mixture of philosophy, theology and self-help… A perfect detox for the soul’ The Times 
 
‘Challenging, persuasive self-help book that seeks to distil the very best of religion’ Independent

A profound and lucid mixture of philosophy, theology and self-help. It's a perfect detox for the soul... Spry, eloquent, pacy.... Armstrong has a knack for grappling with complex ideas in the lightest of ways

It sees Armstrong combine in this brief volume both her usual high quality historical scholarship and an explicit self-help programme that echoes her rousing lectures... Challenging, persuasive self-help book that seeks to distil the very best of religion

Straightforward without being simplistic...frequently fascinating

One of the charming things about Armstrong's book is its deliberate descents into bathos. We move from the high thoughts of the old sages to the demands of everyday life...from an exquisitely intelligent exposition of Sophocles's Oedipus Tyrannus to a meditation upon how we might overcome a personal dislike of a colleague or family member

After the bestselling The Case for God, Karen Armstrong makes the case for compassion - an urgent appeal to establish empathy and altruism at the centre of our private and public lives. 
 
Drawing on a wide range of material, ranging from the spiritualities of the world religions to the findings of contemporary neuroscience, Karen Armstrong argues that compassion is hardwired into our brains, yet is constantly pushed back by our more primitive instincts for selfishness and survival. Since time immemorial religion has enhanced our altruistic tendencies: all faiths insist that the Golden Rule is the test of true spirituality - 'Always treat others as you wish to be treated yourself'. 
 
Taking as her starting point the teachings of the great world religions, Karen Armstrong demonstrates in twelve practical steps how we can bring compassion to the forefront of our lives. These steps both reveal the inadequacies of our knowledge of ourselves and others and enable us to unlock our potential for understanding, empathy and altruism that can be translated into acts of kindness and charity.They culminate in the most radical and challenging of all religious maxims - love your enemy. Yet in today's world, compassion in no longer a luxury but, in the words of Martin Luther King, 'an absolute necessity for our survival'. 
 
Practising these steps will not change our lives overnight and turn us into saints or sages: the attempt to become a more compassionate human being is a lifelong project. Yet Karen Armstrong argues that compassion is inseparable from humanity, and by transcending the limitations of selfishness on a daily basis we will not only make a difference in the world but also lead more fulfilled, happier lives.

Karen Armstrong is one of the world's leading commentators on religious affairs. She spent seven years as a Roman Catholic nun, but left her teaching order in 1969 to read English at St Anne's College, Oxford. In 1982, she became a full time writer and broadcaster. She is a best-selling author of over 16 books. An accomplished writer and passionate campaigner for religious liberty, Armstrong has addressed members of the United States Congress and the Senate and has participated in the World Economic Forum.

What religion really means

The Case for God

An essential book for our times: a thoughtful, cultured response to Richard Dawkins and the New Atheists.

One of our best living writers on religion...prodigiously sourced, passionately written

A journey through religion that helps us to rescue what remains wise from so much that to many in Britain today no longer seems true... Armstrong is one of the the handful of wise and supremely intelligent commentators on religion

A tour de force of learning. A hefty history of theology, philosophy and science, and how they converge, it knocks Dawkins and Hitchens into an intellectual cocked hat...Armstrong rejoices in the unknowableness of life and searches, logically enough for meaning therein

It isn't an easy read - why should it be? - but she is wonderfully clear and insightful - and not out to convert anyone

Dense and brilliant, chastening and consoling.  Whether or not it sells as well as the latest Hitchens or Dawkins will be a measure of us, not the book

Forget Richard Dawkins - just read it with an open mind

Armstrong makes a wise and passionate case for a God of myth rather than reason, of wisdom rather than knowledge

This is a stunned appreciation of an 'otherness' beyond the reach of language, and for Armstrong, constitutes the heart of every religion

There is widespread confusion about the nature of religious truth. For the first time in history, a significantly large number of people want nothing to do with God. Militant atheists preach a gospel of godlessness with the zeal of missionaries and find an eager audience. 
 
Tracing the history of faith from the Palaeolithic Age to the present, Karen Armstrong shows that meaning of words such as 'belief', 'faith', and 'mystery' has been entirely altered, so that atheists and theists alike now think and speak about God - and, indeed, reason itself - in a way that our ancestors would have found astonishing. 
 
Does God have a future? Karen Armstrong examines how we can build a faith that speaks to the needs of our troubled and dangerously polarised world.

Karen Armstrong

A rich and subtle exploration of the sacredness of nature, filled with a timeless wisdom and deep humanity ... Much has been written on the scientific and technological aspects of climate change ... But Armstrong's book is both more personal and more profound. Its urgent message is that hearts and minds need to change if we are to once more learn to revere our beautiful and fragile planet

Karen Armstrong is one of the handful of wise and supremely intelligent commentators on religion

Warm and witty ... [Armstrong's] ability to summon up examples and quotations...is humbling... Sacred Nature [is] a challenge to think differently in the face of climate change, to recover ways of looking at things, including God

An accessible account of how a wider religious perspective might contribute to humans' adopting a more solicitous attitude to nature

A passionate book ... We must change our understanding of nature, this puzzling category we find outselves at liberty to exploit. Happily, there are resources in many religious traditions that can help us

Sacred Nature... is a spiritual time capsule of the post-Christian soul in crisis, a lamentation in the key of Greta Thunberg, with undertones of Carl Jung

This is a beautiful book, very well written and very inspiring for religious believers and those who do not share such religious faith. But it is much more than that: it presents and defends a thesis which the author puts at the centre of a program to restore the lost harmony with nature

Reviews in Science, Religion and Theology

How we can recover our bond with the natural world

In this hugely powerful book, Karen Armstrong argues that it isn't enough to change our behaviour to avert environmental catastrophe, we must rekindle our spiritual bond with the natural world. From gratitude and compassion to sacrifice and non-violence, Armstrong draws themes from the world's religious traditions to offer practical steps to reconnect you with nature. 
 
Speaking to anyone interested in our relationship with nature, worried about environmental destruction, or searching for new actions to save our planet, Sacred Nature will uncover the most profound connections between humans and the natural world.

Karen Armstrong

Praise for Sacred Nature

A rich and subtle exploration of the sacredness of nature, filled with a timeless wisdom and deep humanity ... Much has been written on the scientific and technological aspects of climate change ...

Karen Armstrong is one of the handful of wise and supremely intelligent commentators on religion

Warm and witty ... [Armstrong's] ability to summon up examples and quotations...is humbling... Sacred Nature [is] a challenge to think differently in the face of climate cha ...

A rich and subtle exploration of the sacredness of nature, filled with a timeless wisdom and deep humanity ... Much has been written on the scientific and technological aspects of climate change ...

Karen Armstrong is one of the handful of wise and supremely intelligent commentators on religion

Warm and witty ... [Armstrong's] ability to summon up examples and quotations...is humbling... Sacred Nature [is] a challenge to think differently in the face of climate cha ...

A rich and subtle exploration of the sacredness of nature, filled with a timeless wisdom and deep humanity ... Much has been written on the scientific and technological aspects of climate change ...

Karen Armstrong is one of the handful of wise and supremely intelligent commentators on religion

Warm and witty ... [Armstrong's] ability to summon up examples and quotations...is humbling... Sacred Nature [is] a challenge to think differently in the face of climate cha ...

Books by Karen Armstrong

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